Very odd, but also compelling and thoughtful.

. . . Hopefully not prescient. ( )

Don't think it's aged very well, either as political satire or science fiction. But Charnas can write, no doubt about it. ( )

Weltuntergang. Die Männer leben von den Resten der alten Welt und die Frauen werden unterdrückt. Irgendwann reichts auch nicht mehr für die Männer und sie meucheln sich gegenseitig. Eine Frau überlebt die Gruppe und entkommt in die Wildnis. Langatmige Dystopie mit schwachen, unambitioniertem Ende. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2237380.html

Walk to the End of the World is a horribly well-drawn future dystopia where women are enslaved and brainwashed, and doped up men fight for their own continued supremacy. It's gruesomely well depicted, though not at all subtle and a bit relentless. ( )

Trigger warning: this book contains onscreen and offscreen depictions of rape, casual violence, and cannibalism.

This isn't the book I expected it to be. I picked it up after realizing that I have read very little in the SF subgenre of feminist SF, and found more depth put into the worldbuilding than I would have expected. It's not without some heavy-handedness, but neither as straightforward as all men bad, all women good either. This likely says as much about my expectations as it dos the work itself.

The setting is a post-apocolyptic settlement, after a small group of white men destroyed the world (including, somehow, all people of color and all animals) and took shelter themselves in an encampment called the Holdfast to form a new society. Women, the last surviving scapegoats, were blamed for witching men into the destruction and forced into servitude to be used for breeding purposes.

This story takes place many generations later, and as one would expect, centers around themes of gender. Perhaps contrary to exceptions, however, the book reads like an examination of masculinity- the effect of the dysfunctional, macho society on men.

As the story begins, Captain Kelmz, a handler of Rovers (violent fighting men drugged beyond self-awareness), is hunting Servan D Layo, a notorious social outlaw "of no company, no order, and no legitimate use to his fellows." D Layo is a childhood friend and lover of Eykar Bek, the Endtendant, who administers poison to men who wish to commit suicide and has been found missing from his post. Bek is unique among the men of the Holdfast: he knows his father's name (knowledge usually kept secret from boys to prevent them from the believed inevitable confrontation and killing of their fathers) and is furthermore determined to seek him out.

Kelmz is, of course, drawn into Bek's journey, accompanied by D Layo and later a fem, Alldera, who is pressed upon them by a group of women in exchange for supplies. The story is divided into five roughly equal parts, with the first four being told from the (third-person) perspective of each character, and the last shifting point of view between characters. Alldera, the only female perspective character, doesn't even come on screen until nearly a third of the way through the book, and we don't get her point of view until the fourth part, almost two thirds of the way through the book.

This is an interesting narrative choice. We see the men's society from the inside, though the three male characters are outside the mainstream within it. Kelmz is an older man, over thirty, who has refused his expected place as a Senior to continue working as a Rover officer. Servan is a DarkDreamer, who leads clients through drugged dreams to explore their socially unacceptable desires. Eykar has always been a social outcast due to his knowledge of his father's name, leading him to association with Servan and his assignation to Endpath. Despite this, they are very much in line with the mainstream society when it comes to their dealings with Alldera and general disregard of fems in general in their thoughts and actions.

There is a little bit about women's lives when we get Alldera's point of view, but because she is traveling with the men and no longer in that setting, we only learn about the society of women second-hand through her flashbacks and retellings. It never became as detailed or sharply drawn to me.

In addition, Alldera has a bit of the "only worthwhile woman" syndrome- the only women onscreen with her are judged by both Alldera and the narrative as inferior- "pets" owned by a Senior man that she views as complicit in the oppression, and menial labor "carry-fems" who can't even speak and who are not capable of higher thought, to whom she shows pity at best. It may be a technical Bechdel test pass due to some interaction with the carry-fems that doesn't revolve around men, but I'm not sure it passes the spirit of the test.

In fact, during a conversation with one of the male leads, she thinks, "Even among her own [female] lovers and friends, she had never had anyone to talk to like this. ... This was her first experience of speech as self-expression, eliciting responses of similar quality." (The one saving grace is that it thankfully stops short of a romance between her and said male character.)

Alldera's arrogance concerning her superiority to other women parallels, maybe unintentionally, the arrogance of another, male character late in the novel- only, the narrative seems to be on her side, while it's assuredly not on his. These things make me hesitant to call the novel feminist, despite its themes against the oppression of women.

I'm interested in how these issues are treated in the next volume, Motherlines, which places Alldera in a society of women outside male rule.

The weakest part of this novel is the placement of its setting as a future Earth (presumably future USA). I have a hard time believing that this society is any future version of the patriarchal, militant/fundamentalist white male society it is proposed to be. Such movements usually center around lineage and inheritance, fathers and sons, as well as the focus on the "purity" of women as virgins, controlling their sexuality to ensure the purity of the line- directly contrary to the society set up in this book- not to even mention homophobia compared to the sexual relationships between men that are a normal part of the book's male society.

I also think the prologue is unnecessary- there's really nothing in there that isn't shown or insinuated in a better, less heavy-handed way later in the text.

Overall, even despite the flaws, I found it a short and absorbing read, and interesting enough that I will read the next one. ( )